Just take a look at these three rare C64 items:This NCS QUICK DATA DRIVE is basically a (data) tape drive, similar to Sinclairs Quickdrive, but for the C64 - I guess it's not really slower than the famous but painful slow 1541 floppy drive...

This is a rare DELA Z80 cartridge, similar to Commodore's CP/M cartridge, but smaller...

And this is a 1541 II floppy drive, but with a very nice track display.(Build instructions for such a track display can be found in german C64 magazine "64er" issue 10 from 1991 ...)

If you know some additional rare C64 peripheral devices/cartridges, do not hesitate to send me a note and if possible, a picture - thanks in advance for your help.

Yes, software vendors of security suites are really smart.They give you always advice to have the latest anti virus solution, and, last but not least, they suggest to use personal firewalls as one part of their complete suite as well.

Unfortunately (software) personal firewalls permit always access for some "trusted" applications like your own browser. Very often they do not check if the browser is using original DLLs and of course they can't check if the permitted applications are remotely controlled by another application.So if a malware opens a browser in a invisible/hidden window, this malware can send commands (messages) to this opened (program) window with ease.Such a malware can send data via that hidden browser window, e.g. with a special formed URL or with the help of a html (input) form on a well prepared server.The personal firewall will not be able to forbid this.

Ok, you ask me how a malware can do this, because you didn't download (yet) unknown executables ? Very easy. Just look for zero day exploits, preferrable also for your browser, like the newly discovered exploit here - http://eromang.zataz.com/2012/09/16/zer ... -over-yet/ ... works easily by using flash (I hate flash meanwhile, this ugly plugin isn't necessary anymore since HTML 5 was implemented).

Hint: Using Firefox with "noscript" plugin would prevent getting such flash (look for "moh2010.swf") malware. Also, most of my 5 year old advices are still valid, see http://www.z80.eu/protected.html for more infos.

This is great. And it was not done with an ancient IBM PC/XT.It was done with a Thinkpad T23 (not the most modern one, but still working with Windows XP, and having a build-in high density floppy disk drive ...).Here is the proof:There is a Wikipedia Entry for a boot sector explanation, and there is a discussion page for this article, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Boot_ ... _signatureSomebody said there, CP/M-86 with missing magic bytes (0x55 0xAA) in its boot sector could not be used with other PCs except an ancient IBM PC/XT (or in best case, with an original IBM PC/AT). That's simply wrong (test it with the 1.44MB image file and the appropriate floppy disk writing program like RAWRITE, my DOS program writeimg or even David Dunfield's famous ImageDisk).Boot sectors from floppy disks must not have such a magic byte sequence at the end of the sector (instead, this check is only mandatory for harddisk boot sectors/an MBR on a HD).

Later added:Meanwhile I've access to a Thinkpad 600E. Of course I was able to boot CP/M-86, too.Just look at this second picture:That's the proof "Crispmuncher" just has no idea what he talks about. He told me he "tests" a Thinkpad 600E and he was not able to boot CP/M-86. I guess he has no idea how to transfer the mentioned 1.44MB floppy disk image onto the real floppy disk media.

Last time I followed a discussion at comp.os.cpm, subject named "Running CP/M within Linux?", it was not really related with Linux, but with running CP/M-86 in an x86 emulator.

My preferred choice is VMWare Player, so I decided to get the 1.44MB floppy image from http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive ... inary.html , named "CP/M-86 BOOTABLE for 1.44MB FLOPPY". Unfortunately this floppy disk image is faulty.Somebody should delete it from retroarchive.org.

I got it working... with a floppy image file from http://www.cpm.z80.de/binary.html , named "CP/M-86 binary for 1.44mb floppys" - THIS WORKS even in VMWare Player 4 !

The second floppy disk image runs also with Virtualbox 4.1. It's a bit tricky maybe, because you have to add a virtual "floppy disk controller" first, see screenshot:

You can add a media (=floppy disk image file) only if you have a disk controller.You should change the file extension from ".flp" to ".dsk", otherwise VirtualBox does not recognize the format.

Like before, I selected "DOS" as OS in VirtualBox. It runs smoothly too:

EDITED DAYS LATER:

I got also cpmtools working, with the help of a self written program, which can convert the image into a different track order (no alternating heads, just one side and then the second side of a floppy disk is expected from cpmtools).The result - I can use "-f cpm86-144feat" as the needed media type option:

To get the same result, try my Turbo-C program cpm86cnv, which can be d/l'd from >here<.